Legend of Grimrock Bringing Back the FP Dungeon Crawl

I’m sure a few gamers out there remember the likes of Wizardry and Eye of the Beholder… and when they stopped being fun with later sequels. Well, a group of developers hopes to bring back the old first-person dungeon crawl with Legend of Grimrock, and early videos of the game look like they’re well on their way to doing just that.

It has all the classic elements old-school gamers will love—party members represented by floating portraits, click hack-and-slash action, hidden doors and plenty of items. Yet it also has great looking graphics, even in its Alpha state, and crisp looking gameplay.

The game gives players control of four party members, all prisoners trying to escape a labyrinth of tunnels built into a mountain known as Grimrock, which the developer blog describes as “a ruthless, desolate and impossibly high spire of a mountain where criminals are committed to exile until they either perish or prove by escaping to be innocent of their crimes.”

There are four characters shown on the blog at the moment, including the three classics: a fighter, a mage, and a rogue. The developers state in addition to what they have now, they’re “planning to create a bunch of interesting characters for you to choose from, each with their own specialities and quirks.”

The early gameplay video only shows off some of the basic enemies, but the blog shows some of the tougher looking opponents players will face. Among them are mallet-wielding tunnel ogres and summoned tomb guardians known as the “Uggardiands.”

And if that still isn’t enough, Minecraft developer Notch gave the game a personal thumbs up on his blog, stating that after the dungeon crawler genre met an unfortunate end around 1993, “something wonderful is happening … I realize it’s a niche game that might not fit everyone, but to me it is one of the most exciting games in development.”

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